A Kiss Before Dying
by BeatriceParadisio
Summary: The cold embrace of the void was the only thing that filled Elyn with any sense of life. But the politics of her new home and the continuos echo of laughter threaten to open the young Breton to a bright, violent world that she never dreamed existed. This is a dark romance between the Listener and Cicero. Title comes from Oblivion.


AN: I was in the mood to write something a bit darker than my other fics on this site. In my opinion this is still rated T, but if anyone disagrees I would be happy to reconsider the rating to M. It will be a dark romance, which shouldn't be a shock considering this takes place in the culture of the Dark Brotherhood. I may be a bit slow in updating since I'm working on multiple things on this site and another, but I won't abandon it. I recent replay of Skyrim made me remember how much I love the Dark Brotherhood and Cicero. He is probably the one thing that beats out the Oblivion DB questline and the only reason I felt pulled to write something in Skyrim.

Anyways, that's enough rambling from me. Like all authors on fanfiction I am only playing with the world and characters created by Bethesda. I also live for reviews. They are great motivators for staying on task with posting. I hope you enjoy this introduction and please let me know what you think!

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 **Prologue**

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The room was almost silent. The fire had died hours ago, taking with it the warm crackle of dry wood being consumed by flame. The man that owned the fire and the home it warmed had long since stopped speaking, his mind focused solely on taking in wet, rattling breaths followed by wheezing, stinging exhales. Although Elyn generally preferred the pure silence that came with the deepest parts of night, but she enjoyed the sounds of the man's labored breathing and the chorus it provided to her intricate work.

"Purify, present, preserve," she muttered to herself as she delicately lifted a small knife and moved back to the man. His wild, glazed eyes stared at her as she lifted the blade so that the glow of the lone candle made the metal dance with an orangey-white light. His breaths came quicker as she leaned over him, taking in the long, y-shaped incision she had carefully carved through his skin. This next step was the tricky part and it required all of her concentration.

"Why," the man wheezed in a voice that had moved beyond pain to only hold the deep fear of someone on death's door without a notion of how they got there. "Why are you doing this to me?"

Elyn didn't look up, didn't even acknowledge him or his garbled groan as she lightly dug her hands into the hot tangle of bowel until she reached the pulsing aorta. It thrummed with life still, her long incision through the skin and muscle not doing enough to make him lose so much blood to deplete the body's main lifeline. She let her fingers slowly press along the sides, her skin slick over the ligaments that covered the man's anterior spine. It didn't take much pressure to pull the artery free from its connective tissue binding, allowing her to carefully lift it through the mesentery and digestive tract.

"Please," the man gasped again, his voice growing weaker. "Please stop."

She ignored him, listening instead to the long-dead voice of her father, following his instructions one by one. _If the heart is damaged you must take the tube and carefully feed it through the artery. You need to reach the arch or else you risk getting uneven preservation._

Her hands followed the steps with the care of a healer tending a wounded child. Her touch was soft as she slit a small hole and deftly inserted a thin tube. Blood began to spurt through the end, but she barely noticed the warm liquid hitting her as she guided her instrument up through the man's vessel.

"Then carefully pour the fluid into the tube," she muttered. The glass jar felt slick against her sticky, wet hands as she lifted it up to the small funnel and began to pour in the clear fluid that froze flesh for eternity. Her eyes barely watered anymore at the strong, chemical smell that wafted off the slowly draining fluid. She had, after all, grown up with the stuff, making its smell as welcome as the flowery scent of her mother or the musk of freshly dug earth on her father.

"Please," the man begged again. "Why do this?"

Elyn lifted the funnel higher, her hazel eyes staring blankly out from her high cheekbones and pale skin that came from her Breton heritage. "She always was a strange girl," she muttered as the room melted around her and left her with the image of light streaming in from a large window, the dusting dancing in the beams like little specks of magic ash. She could see the shrouded bodies on the table, the stench of lilies and nirnroot covering the sweet sting of embalming fluid. An old woman was speaking to a man, their whispers floating to her ears despite their attempts for secrecy.

"She was always a strange girl," the woman said quickly, her eyes darting about to see if anyone was listening. "I doubt anyone will take her in."

"But she has such a pretty face. Some family must want her for their son," the man pressed. "Isn't there anyone?"

"Pretty she might be, but she's like a painting. From a distance she's all golden curls and a petite frame, but up close you realize that there's nothing inside. She barely speaks and her eyes…it's like looking into a corpse. She's empty and lifeless. No one here will want her."

Elyn blinked, the bright image disappearing back into the almost-black of the room. The funnel was empty and the man had grown silent. How long had he been dead? She normally savored the final breaths of those she worked on, but she had missed his.

She gave herself a small admonishing curse before slowly removing her tube. There was nothing to be done about it now. The man had died and it was her fault he didn't fulfill his promise to her. He couldn't be blamed for her mind wandering away to the past so that she wasn't aware of the present. The fault for that sat with her alone. Still, the truth of the matter didn't wash away the bitter disappointment she felt.

"You got the better end of our deal," she whispered, placing a kiss on the man's lips before reaching for her pack and the chemicals she needed to complete his preservation. The man stared at her from behind sightless eyes, the blue Nordic orbs empty of any of the life and heat that had been there only a few hours earlier. His skin was paling from the healthy glow of a twenty-something year old warrior with each passing moment, taking with it the flush in his cheeks from drink and arousal. He had seemed so happy when she agreed to go to his home, her promise of giving him whatever he wanted so long as he did the same in return freeing his hands from their social restraints and allowing them to wander across her body. He had found ecstasy in his release, her fit body and healthy curves sending him far to quickly into a brief bliss that he had demanded from her. He had been so content after that he barely registered her request to start the ritual that gave her the most pleasure, taking the cup she offered without a thought. It wasn't until his body was numbed and she tied his limbs to the posts of his bed that he began to suspect that something was not as he expected. That maybe what she wanted wasn't something he could so easily give.

He was not the first and he wouldn't be the last. Elyn could live off the gold she was bound to find in the house for some time, allowing her to continue her solitary existence that began so many years earlier. But soon the money would grow short and her body would ache for a human touch that was never enough. No man could ever coax her body into feeling the thrill of being alive, no matter how much she tried. She would again be left with no choice but to turn to the tools her father had left her and the excitement she felt in performing her trade. She would feel her heart pound and her chest lighten as she proved with precise cuts and small stitches that she wasn't truly dead inside. She lived, unlike the frozen bodies that would forever remain as they were. She was not empty, like the drained men that had emptied themselves in her only to be emptied by her so that she could feel her own vigor and strength. She was alive. Alive. Alive.

"Alive," she muttered as she slowly redressed the man, his shirt covering the stitches that held his skin tightly together as if it were never cut. Brushing the man's light hair back, she lightly closed his eyes and gave him a parting kiss on his forehead.

"You are dead now, but I am alive."


End file.
